Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights

Stories of Art

This episode explores the enigmatic life and hallucinatory artistry of Hieronymus Bosch, focusing on his most famous work, The Garden ofly Delights. The hosts trace his

Key takeaways

• Bosch's real name was likely Hieronymus van Aachen.
• A major fire in 's-Hertogenbosch in 1463 may have informed his depictions of hellish infernos.

Main topics

• Early life of Hieronymus Bosch
• The Garden of Earthly Delights analysis

Notable quotes

We have bored a few holes through the and the door of the locked room, but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep dive into how Bosch's unique, hallucinator

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alistair Souk. And I'm James Fox. Speaker 1 (0:09) A gigantic bird-headed monster with a cooking pot for a crown appears to be sitting on the toilet. It's busy stuffing a naked human being into its beak. A man who, as he disappears down its throat, seems to be farting a flock of blackbirds. Below, other unfortunate people are emerging from the creature's backside, encased in an enormous balloon-like turd before tumbling into a cesspit. Welcome to hell, folks, and welcome to the diabolical world of Hieronymus Bosch, who painted this nightmarish scene more than 500 years ago. Alistair, has there ever been a weirder artist than Bosch? I, Speaker 2 (0:55) at risk of sounding a bit square, perhaps, I just, you know, wanted to say that I've never taken LSD. I've never done Ayaska, Mescaline, none of this. But I think it's fair to say that the paintings Hieronymus Bosch creates in the 15th century into the 16th century, they are ferociously strange, hallucinatory, like the most psychedelic, aggressive sometimes trip I think it could be possible to imagine. Speaker 2 (1:24) That is why he is so great. He is this original inventive artist. And these forms, hybrid, strange, menacing, monstrous forms, come tumbling out of his imagination and appear throughout his work. And subsequently, in later centuries, have proved enormously influential. I think particularly, actually, in the 20th. We'll talk about that later. I love, for example, the works of Studio Ghibli. Speaker 1 (1:52) Yes. Speaker 2 (1:53) And if you think of a film like Spirited Away with all of those monsters teaming over that bridge into that hotel, whatever it is at the centre of the film, it is pure Hieronymus Bosch. Yes. And he's famous for these macabre, diabolical scenes. And there were some big controversies around his work as well. And I know we're going to talk today about probably his most famous work, would you say? The Garden of Earthly Delights, his biggest... Biggest piece, Speaker 1 (2:18) a Speaker 2 (2:18) triptych. Speaker 1 (2:18) I mean, there are very few freaks in the history of art. You know, figures who seem to crash land from nowhere, who do things like no one else and then kind of just vanish and we never see them again. And Bosch is one of those freaks. And art historians like me, we hate outliers. We're always trying to put people into context. We're always trying to find precedence. We're always trying to prove that someone isn't quite as unique as we think. But Bosch just is unique. I think this is very interesting, just to take Speaker 2 (2:45) a step back for a second, because this question of the outlier thing versus the context, I'm imagining that we're going to put him in context and that you will be giving a very good and authoritative detailed description of the town he came from, which... It's, first of all, very difficult to pronounce. How do we call it, his hometown? I think it was, at the time, Speaker 1 (3:02) Sertogenbosch. Sertogenbosch, although I think it's pronounced in the Netherlands today, Den Bosch. I think that's Speaker 2 (3:11) a Speaker 1 (3:11) shortening, isn't it? Speaker 2 (3:11) And Speaker 1 (3:12) he takes Speaker 2 (3:12) his name after this town. But, you know, we'll get into what this town was. For now, it's worth saying it's basically an artistic backwater at the time. And so we can do all of that context stuff, but... Ultimately, at the end of it, I think you have a case here of, you say outlier, I'd say just genius. This is unaccountable. And as I'm sure we will get into, there are all of these debates about whether he was a heretic or an orthodox in his religious beliefs. But fundamentally, he's creating stuff that just nobody had created before. Speaker 1 (3:47) kind of extraordinary. And he himself is a mystery. We know next to nothing about him. We don't know when he was born. We don't know how he trained. We don't know what he looked like. We don't know what he thought about the world. And what we're going to try and do in this episode, Alistair, is to try to piece together the mystery of Hieronymus Bosch's life and then to explore that great work, The Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the weirdest pictures in the history of art, in order to try to get to the bottom of Hieronymus Bosch. Can I add Speaker 2 (4:14) a disclaimer before we get into it? Because at risk of promising our audience that we're going to solve the mystery of the Garden of Earthly Delights, I just wanted to mention there's a very famous German art historian called Panofsky, Erwin Panofsky. And his line on Bosch is about decoding Bosch. As he said, we have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room, but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key. And I think... I know it sounds slightly anticlimactic before we've begun. I don't think we can promise the key, but it is fascinating trying to get in and actually see what's going on. We'll Speaker 1 (4:48) try and drill some more holes. And just to say, we're doing this subject in response to popular demand. Many of you have messaged in requesting an episode on this subject. This then is the story of Hieronymus Bosch and his Garden of Earthly Delights. Speaker 1 (5:12) Alistair, I'd like to bring our listeners and our viewers back to the middle of the 15th century, to the 1450s. We're in the Duchy of Brabant, which is modern-day Netherlands, Belgium. And as you travel northeast from the great commercial centre of Antwerp, you enter this kind of flatland of marshes and swamps and bogs. And about 60 miles northeast of Antwerp, rising out of the bogs like a kind of mirage, is the city of Sertigenbosch. And this is a prosperous place, provincial but prosperous. It has a population in the 1450s of about 15,000 people. Still exists. I mean, I've been there. Still exists. Den Bosch. Do you like it? Speaker 2 (5:52) It didn't leave an enormous impression. I saw an amazing Bosch exhibition there, which did. But the town itself felt, at risk Speaker 1 (6:00) of Speaker 2 (6:00) offending people, Speaker 1 (6:01) fairly nondescript. Yeah, well, in the 1450s, there were about 15,000 people living there. And one of them was a boy called... Hieronymus van Aachen. Yes. Although all of his friends and family knew him as Juhn. Now, he is from a family of artists. In fact, every man in the family is an artist. His grandfather is an artist. His father is an artist. His four uncles are artists. His two brothers are artists. But they're pretty minor provincial figures, aren't they? I mean, they really are, which makes it all the more remarkable that Juhn, the youngest, would emerge. as one of the great figures in the history of art. Yes. He is born probably around 1450. We don't know exactly when. He's the fourth of five children. He's the youngest of three boys. And we know next to nothing about his childhood. We do know that in February 1462, when he's about 12, his father buys a house. on the eastern side of the market square, right in the centre of Sertöken Bosch. And this house still exists. Did you visit it when you went? I did not, I must confess. OK, so this house was probably their home and their workshop. It was refurbished relatively recently. It's now a little museum. You can go and visit it. And the next fact we know is totally tantalising. Because in the following year, in the summer of 1463, a catastrophic fire. sweeps through the city of Sertogenbosch. And I have gone down a rabbit hole on this. I spent much of last week going through Dutch municipal records and translating them with various forms of software. And I was able to piece together this fire. Speaker 2 (7:38) Right, right. So Speaker 1 (7:39) it breaks out on the 13th of June in a cloth dyers workshop. south of the market square. It then moves through the narrow streets north, past the market square where Bosch's family live, and then onwards north to the harbour. And it is catastrophic. I mean, hundreds of buildings are destroyed. I read somewhere even 4,000. Is that Speaker 2 (8:01) a lie? I Speaker 1 (8:02) think that's incorrect. I think it was that hundreds of buildings were destroyed, but the city itself only had a couple of thousand buildings. So a large proportion of the city was destroyed. So people are displaced. Oh, yeah. And there is some tantalising evidence to suggest that actually Bosch's family home, the Van Aken family home, was itself damaged during the fire. Because I... told you earlier that the building was refurbished recently. When they refurbished it, they found that part of the timber structure, the roof joists, the spiral staircase that runs up the middle, and the floors all date to 1463, the year of the fire. So that's either a coincidence, or perhaps it was damaged during the fire and then rebuilt later that year. So the question I have for you is, given that Bosch went on to produce these amazing... scenes of infernos. Yes. Do you think it's too far to imagine that perhaps this fire played some role in his creative imagination? No. Good. I think Speaker 2 (9:02) that, as you say, there are very few facts that we have about Bosch's life. And we've already rubbished the idea that providing context can provide insight into him as an artistic genius. But in the case of The Fire, I think it is too tantalising to dismiss because when you look at his work, he depicts a lot of visions of hell, last judgements, and quite often you find these scenes, these vistas in them of, as you say, infernos. And the thing is, when you look at them, they are remarkably realistic. You know, we're going to see one later because on the right panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights that we'll discuss in the second half, without this being a spoiler, that is one of his prime examples of a vision of hell. And in the background, you can see all of these buildings which are being burnt. It's an amazing passage of painting. And there's soot everywhere. There's smoke. There are lots of people marauding around. I mean, I mentioned displaced people before. And I think here he was, what would he have been? About 13. Yes. I think it's safe to assume that he's already in the trade, being taught to paint by his father, by that wider family, in that workshop on the eastern side of the market square. Everything is imperiled. His entire world is like the rug is pulled from under his feet. It must have been traumatic, shocking. It must have felt apocalyptic to him. And you just feel, and I don't think this is too much, that he is channeling his memories of that. It's informing and shaping his worldview and he's channeling Speaker 1 (10:45) them into the paintings that he creates, don't you think? I so agree. I so agree. If I were 13 years old... and I was watching a fire tear through my city, and seeing buildings destroyed, buildings owned by people I knew and perhaps loved, and watching people die and hearing people scream, and then seeing those flames approaching my own home and perhaps engulfing my own home, I would be... traumatised by that for life. And I know that fires were a more common occurrence back then, but they were also more scary back then because you couldn't fight them so easily. Speaker 2 (11:13) Yes. And it's an interesting question, which of course can never be answered because the fire did happen. But without the inferno, would his work have been quite so intense? I think perhaps that's what it's giving, this real sense of almost spiritual fear, crisis, intensity. Speaker 1 (11:30) Yeah, totally agree. Speaker 2 (11:32) So anyway, Speaker 1 (11:32) let's carry on briefly with the story of his life. So the next thing we know, I presume that after that inferno, he is working within the family home and workshop alongside his father and his brothers. So I think he's first mentioned as a painter in 1480 to 1881. Yeah, now interesting. In that year, 1480 to 1481, Hieronymus Bosch gets married. Yes. So it's quite late for someone of that period. He's in his early 30s. And he gets married to a woman called Alade van der Meervan. And she is from a different social circle. So he is artisanal, lower middle class. She is the daughter of some wealthy merchants. I think her parents have died. And so she's inherited a very large sum of money. She's very rich. She owns some land outside of Sertigenbosch. And so this is a real social upgrade for Hieronymus Bosch. There's a nuance to this that Speaker 2 (12:22) I found quite interesting. Supposedly in those days, you've mentioned the family home for Bosch was on the eastern side of the market town. I think after the marriage, don't they settle on the north side? Totally different there. Very, very posh. It's where all the smart people lived on the northern side of the market Speaker 1 (12:37) square. Speaker 2 (12:37) It's currently Speaker 1 (12:37) a Levi's store. Is it? So they're only 20 metres apart from where the family house is, but it's a completely different social circle. So he moves, he leaves the family work. workshop. Although that's Speaker 2 (12:49) interesting, James, because something I'd read is that there's a debate about whether he sets up in the new place or is still commuting 20 metres back to the family workshop, because I think there's a school of thought that perhaps he continues to paint and is part of that sort of family Speaker 1 (13:02) set up there. But he does sell his share of the property to one of his brothers. So it's possible that he is moving separately. What we do know... is that after he gets married, he begins to move in very different social circles. Yes. And this brings us to this really fascinating organisation, which is called the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Yes. This is a very important fraternity that really governs the politics and the economy and the religion and society of Sertögenbosch. Very important organisation. There are lots of people who are members. He himself becomes a member in the mid-1480s. But right at the top... of this organisation, there is a small number of sworn brothers. Speaker 2 (13:47) Yeah. Do you know, I was looking into the sworn brothers, the sworn members, and I thought, I'm sure this is a fact that will tickle you. There are about 300. Yeah. And more than half were either priests Speaker 1 (13:57) or the Latin magistrate, academics. Yes. There Speaker 2 (14:01) you go. Once upon a time, people like you were Speaker 1 (14:03) valued very highly. Those days have gone. But there were no artists or craftsmen until Bosch. No, it was completely unheard of that an artist would be in this. elite class of people within Sertigenbosch, and certainly his family members, none of his family members had ever managed to get in to become sworn brothers. So in 1488, he becomes a sworn brother. And we know that after he gets elected as a sworn brother, in the summer of 1488, he hosts a banquet. And one of the curiosities of the historical record is that though we know next to nothing about Hieronymus Bosch, we do know... what he served his guests that night. Do we really? Yes, we do. He served them 24 pounds of beef, carrots, wine, and ginger, pepper, and saffron. I can imagine how expensive those spices would have been in the 15th century. And we also know that 10 years later, Bosch hosts another banquet, and this time he serves them... two swans. Right. So I think the point about all of this is to stress that we often, when we look at Bosch's work, we think he must have been some weirdo painting in a dungeon in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. That is not who Hieronymus Bosch was. He was rich. He was one of the richest people in Sertigen Bosch. He was well-connected. He was cultivated. He was probably quite charming. He was sophisticated. You've been looking at the culinary Speaker 2 (15:24) records of the Bosch household. I was looking with great interest into his tax records, James. Yes. And this is to bolster everything you've been saying, but there are, for historians, 14 documents which relate to financial transactions by Bosch and his wife from the period 1474 through to 1498. And there are further tax records for 1502 to 3, 1511 to 12, that show that he was in the wealthiest. top 10 % of the citizens of Stettigenbosch. Thank you very much. And I think that this is significant for another reason as well, because he is effectively independently wealthy. Yes. Quite often what you see he's doing is you mentioned some of the land that his wife had inherited or owned. And I think there are occasions where he's selling it off to raise cash. So in a sense, he doesn't need to work apart from... on his own terms, maybe. So it comes back to that other point about he's in the backwater, but he's tremendously original. You wonder whether, because you're in a backwater, you're maybe not subject to all of the influences you might be if you were in, at this time, say, Antwerp, as you mentioned, or in Bruges or in Ghent. Does it give you a freedom to be the weirdo? that you might be inside? And similarly, does financial independence allow that kink to come to the fore as well? I think it's tempting to conclude that probably in both Speaker 1 (16:49) cases, it does. Tax returns, municipal records, menus, let no one accuse us of not doing our homework. But anyway, let's turn to the work of Hieronymus Bosch. I think the first thing to say before we get into it is there's not much. So I think we did an episode a few months ago about Vermeer, where we said, I think, 36, 37 paintings survive. It's considerably fewer than that for Bosch. We think maybe about 20 pictures. 25. 20, 25 pictures, seven of which have been signed, some really fantastic drawings as well. And it's very difficult to construct a chronology of those works because most of them aren't signed and dated. We don't have records surrounding the commissioning of them. But I think the first really Boschian masterpiece, is a picture that we're very lucky to have is in the National Gallery in London, and it's called Christ Mocked. Now, we should just say something about Speaker 2 (17:42) the dates, because I got a bit concerned about this on WhatsApp, James, because I was looking at it. In fact, I went to look at the painting yesterday. Did you? I did. And it's a stunning work. The National Gallery dates it as 1510. Now, he dies, Bosch, in 1516. So they sort of see it as a late work. And I did ask them. Unfortunately... they haven't replied so far, so we can correct this in the future, but whether there's sort of debate about it. You're suggesting that there are scholars who think it should date from this earlier phase of his career. Yes, Speaker 1 (18:12) the National Gallery dates it 1510, so late work, very tentatively, it must be said. I've never felt that's quite right. It doesn't seem like a late work to me. And indeed, in 2016... to mark the 500th anniversary of Bosch's death. There was a huge Bosch research project where they brought all the great Dutch scholars Speaker 2 (18:32) and Speaker 1 (18:32) scholars from all over Europe. That's why I was in the town, to Speaker 2 (18:35) review that show that was the culmination of that project. Yeah, in Speaker 1 (18:37) 2016. And they produced a catalogue resume off the back of it, and they concluded that this is actually an earlier work, Speaker 2 (18:43) and it Speaker 1 (18:43) dates to the 1490s. And I'm inclined to agree Speaker 2 (18:47) with them on that. So, I mean, it's interesting that we've done the tax records, we have the technicalities of the day out the way. Maybe we should actually talk about the picture because it's a really great painting. And it is called, as you said, Christ Mocked. Christ appears very pale, slightly effeminate tilt to his head, standing vertically in the middle of the picture. And he's surrounded by four men, two behind and two who seem to be kneeling in front of him. And it's Speaker 1 (19:16) a Speaker 2 (19:16) very claustrophobic work, isn't it? Everyone feels jammed up together as though they're playing this strange fancy dress version of the game Sardines. And what's happening is Bosch is conflating two episodes from the so-called Passion of Christ, where Christ is mocked and also Christ is forced to wear a crown of thorns. And the two men in the background who are, one of them is wearing green, the other has green oak leaves in his hat and a huge spiked S &M. style bondage dog collar. They are trying to crown Jesus Christ with the crown of thorns. And beneath you have these two figures whose clothes are much more red, who seem to be in one case touching his hands, perhaps about to rip off his white robe. And there's a real sense of menace, violence, also slight madness. If you look at the face at the bottom left, he looks slightly demented. There's a and